


My Body the Hand Grenade

by Missy



Category: I Spit on Your Grave (1978)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Courtroom Drama, Discussion of Rape, Gen, Moving On, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 05:05:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7030165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jenny moves on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Body the Hand Grenade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).



> Reviewing the movie made me want something for Jennifer beyond her revenge, even though it goes on to color her actions and life, as such a momentous event would. I really really hope this pleases you!
> 
> Warning: Due to the nature of this canon, this fic includes **Discussion of Trauma Related to Rape and Battery** and **Explicit Violence.** Please read this and watch the source material at your own discretion.

Faith. It's something the others - police, reporters and family members - can't believe she maintains after surviving what they euphemistically call 'the ordeal'.

But Jennifer Hills - the North County Chopper - absolutely believes only one thing. Her survival is no accident. That she draws breath, that she lives to wash the blood from beneath her nails and calmly listen to the screams of her enemies barely hidden by the thunderous violins of her beloved classical music, is no gift of fate. She created this colossus of self-esteem and guts, blood and stubbornness, captained it like a Valkyrie mounted to its shoulder. She will be the one to put it down when she’s had enough.

IF she has enough.

That she has the choice between mercy and vengeance is some slim miracle. Jennifer will cherish this fact later, after the firestorm. 

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

They hold her for six days. The bodies – mutilated, lying all over the house and the woods – are her testimony. The professionals offer confirmation and sympathy. Her attorney tells her that no sane human being would ever commit such violence for reasons beyond temporary insanity, and Jenny’s psych exam tells them all she’s stone-cold reasonable. Her family appears to rally around her, nursing her with cheerful bromides that she struggles against. They appear to halo around her to the court she’s a good girl when the bail hearing happens. They let her out for a thousand dollars, paid in full by her father. 

Jennifer herself has no idea why they see her as a child - some poor waif who can't manage herself. Her resentment is useful and she's smart enough to take her resentment over that reception to project a similar image for the court and let it tell the story. To them she’s either a total victim or a sociopath. They have no idea how to try her and she knows that they’ll never conjure up a conviction with the information they have.

The press takes an instant liking to her, tries to use her as an object lesson. Every magazine cover and every news magazine blares the same headline - Jennifer Hills - the clean-cut girl, a smart, bright career woman nearly killed by a group of backwoods rednecks looking to prove something. _Don’t go out there alone, girls,_ they tut. _This could happen to you too._

Jenny hates the idea that she’s somehow contributing to a world where women lock themselves in at night, where they can’t go to a grocery store alone or take a trip to Spain solo. They'll be a bit more insular, a bit more frightened of the world because it Happened To Jenny, and It Could Happen to You. 

Live, she wants to say, watching the news reports. Run away, take a dare, buy a mobile home, see places you’ve never been before. And if it happens to you, it was never you fault.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The trial lasts for six long, emotionally-draining weeks. The prosecution plays its cards early, predictably calling her a wanton murdering Jezebel who led those boys to their deaths. Her attorney has Jennifer’s character witnesses, her background, her manners, her psych profile and some unanswerable questions on his side. Why, he asks, would a woman kill a group of total strangers? Could it be that Jenny was telling the truth? His dark, moist eyes capture the sympathetic gazes of the jury. He asks the sky if Jennifer Hills has suffered enough.

On the stand, she cries but doesn’t faint. She tells her story with strong, resolute determination, and never falters from the facts. She testifies to their cruelty, to her own responding anger.

Jenny wants to tell the world so much more. To testify to the vivid ugliness of the brutality done to her, instead of couching it in terms palatable for a small-town jury. To the year spent lying in fear, to the months worrying she’d come up with syphilis or some other social disease. That she’d end up pregnant. To the nightmares, the anxiety, the stress. But the words choke and burn in the back of her mind, in her refusal to ever again play the fool. 

Few dare to question her story after that, aside from the men’s families.

She’d almost feel sorry for them, were she not absolutely fascinated by their existence. She wants to prod them like slimy tadpoles _How could you produce such monsters and loose them on the world,_ she wants to ask. How could you let them think it’s just fine to brutalize a woman – to make a game out of stalking and hurting what they couldn't understand? Her palms turn pink from nail marks, her brain throbbing from the stress of keeping her tongue silent.

But you cannot extract words from the closed throats of the dead. And you cannot get answers for the unknowable. So she keeps her distance. It’s better for the case.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The jury deliberates for an hour and returns, sad-faced but resolute, to declare her innocent. 

Jennifer remembers a number of things about the moment; the sudden give deep within her gut as she hears the verdict read. The moans of anguish from the peanut gallery. The sensation of the handcuffs penning her in suddenly, miraculously, coming loose.

After they finish processing her, after she pushes her way through the throng of reporters outside the courthouse, she takes a step out into the sunshine and tilts her head back. The grey pillars of concrete justice stand behind her, thick and tall. She feels safe and free for the first time in years. 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

She returns to New York. The town is huge and anonymous enough for her to continue that sensation of normalcy, allowing her to blend into the skin of the city like salve to a wound. Everything she needs is within ten minutes of her apartment, which she doesn’t leave at all for a few months. Once the publicity dies away and she can walk the streets without turning heads she finds a job, takes short trips – tries to forget she’s endured what she’d endured. For a long time she’s nothing but a shadow, editing the manuscripts of others, hiding from her own feelings, awkwardly occupying her half-lived in skin.

And then her own silence isn’t enough.

It takes her awhile, but she returns to her typewriter. She finds a way to conjure the words – to speak about a girl who discovers herself and learns how to stand and fight. She pushes back the darkness with light.

And she kills monsters. Many monsters, in the harsh warm haze of the morning or the cool air of the evening. She sends her tales out into the world, where they offer hope for other victims. Their words, floating back to her like messages in a bottle, give her enough strength to move further into the world, to start speaking at schools and attending support groups, to taking karate classes, eventually becoming proficient enough to become a teacher.

She did not have the armor she needed when she had the misfortune to meet the wrong men at the wrong time. She will never allow others to be so lax with their own safety. She will never allow herself to sit passively by and let others become victimized by those crueler, physically stronger than they ever again. 

She rolls a sheaf of paper through the teeth of her typewriter. The first words come vividly, simply, in great gushes. 

They will know her pain, if not understand it.


End file.
